In a mere two years, Erskine Design grew from two people working at home into a full-fledged agency of eight, working with major clients. Their website needed to better reflect their achievements, abilities, and team strengths. They also sought to improve the quality of data collected during client inquiries. Simon Collison explores the agency’s thought processes, and the decisions they made as their own client.
Redesigning Your Own Site
Redesigning your freelance website is an exercise in masochism. There are no colleagues to share the pain: It’s just you. As the designer who wrote The Art of Self-Branding, freelancer Lea Alcantara knew her site had to be just right. People were bound to scrutinize any update to the design, and she couldn’t afford to damage her credibility. Follow her process as she experiments to find the perfect balance of change and consistency.
More from A List Apart
Humility: An Essential Value
In this excerpt from In Fulfillment: The Designer’s Journey, Justin Dauer ruminates on the past and the importance of keeping an open mind.
Personalization Pyramid: A Framework for Designing with User Data
Colin Eagan and Jeffrey MacIntyre offer a “ground-up” approach to implementing personalized digital experiences that are intentional, ethical, and technologically sound.
Mobile-First CSS: Is It Time for a Rethink?
Is mobile-first CSS always the best option? Patrick Clancey explores the pros and cons and lays out an alternative.
Designers, (Re)define Success First
Learn how to engage stakeholders, focus on impactful objectives, and measure the results in this template for ethical design.
Breaking Out of the Box
What can we do with thirty pixels? Windows Controls Overlay frees us from 40 years of history telling us how apps should look.
How to Sell UX Research with Two Simple Questions
Seriously, do not ever design screens again without first answering these questions: what are the objects and how do they relate?
A Content Model Is Not a Design System
Why do so many content models still look more like design systems rather than reflecting structured data? Mike Wills takes us on a personal journey as he examines his own past experiences and invites us to conceive content models that articulate meaning and group related content together for use on any channel.
Design for Safety, An Excerpt
In this excerpt from Design for Safety, Eva PenzeyMoog discusses concrete ways you can incorporate safety awareness into your design processes.
Sustainable Web Design, An Excerpt
In this excerpt from Sustainable Web Design, Tom Greenwood provides clear guidance on how to track and address the carbon footprint of our websites.
Voice Content and Usability
In this excerpt from Voice Content and Usability, author Preston So talks about the messy, primordial nature of human speech and challenges with programming computers to deal with these complexities.
Designing for the Unexpected
As devices continue to diversify in dizzying ways, how can we make sure our work on the web stays as relevant as ever for the long haul? Cathy Dutton shares how practitioners must perfect designs both for the paradigms of the present and the twists of the future, come what may.
Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback
Receiving feedback can be a stressful experience: will an open-ended question attract helpful guidance or harsh criticism? Erin “Folletto“ Casali coaches us through a process to ensure that feedback always lands gracefully.
